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Parental Loss and Achievement is a compilation of four articles which focus on what appears to be a disproportionate number of individuals, prominent in political, religious, and creative fields, who suffered the loss of a parent by death in childhood. Three of the articles, written by Pierre Rentchnick, Pierre de Senarclens and André Haynal, are translations from the French, 'Les Orphelins, Menent-ils le Monde?', where they first appeared in 1978. The fourth article, by Marvin Eisenstadt, is reprinted from the American Psychologist, 1978.
The introduction, by Eisenstadt, indicates that their collaborative intent is to determine 'What transpired psychologically to yield such an achievement?' Later he indicates that we know more about the negative effects of death of a parent or loss of family, while the positive outcome of trauma, i.e. outstanding success and achievement, is rarely delineated in the literature.
The idea that the kind of adaptation to loss utilized by these individuals was a necessary motive for their success and creativity must be given serious consideration in any attempts to explain the historical fact of parental loss by death in so many famous people.
Questions do arise, however, from the reading of these rich and varied papers. Such questions will be raised as each section is reviewed, as well as in an overall view of the papers taken together.
The first paper, by Eisenstadt, 'Parental loss and genius', is primarily a statistical compilation of individuals who were selected on the basis of inclusion of one column of space or more in the Encyclopedia